This doesn’t look like much, admittedly, but the flavors were stellar. I made a simple broth from the BBQ pork bones we saved from Saturday’s dinner, simmering them for about three hours with onion, celery, carrot, ginger, fennel, anise, clove, garlic, and lemongrass. Then I strained it and ladled it into bowls of silky udon to which I added a spoon of soy-braised burdock and a big heap of kimchi from the jar. The result…
Category: Soup
I was away all weekend, so this here was dinner from last Thursday. The night after all the lovely sashimi we had Phase II of the post-Mitsuwa feast. I had bought a small tray of domestic Wagyu-style beef, sliced super-thin for shabu-shabu, and that was the jumping-off point for the meal. We had dashi left in the fridge, flavored with the black radishes I had pressure-cooked in it, and to that I added all the…
On Martin Luther King Jr. day we went to a splendid dinner party with the crew. The main dish was Leanne’s fish stew, which I helped prep for, and which then evolved into a collaborative effort. The base was fish broth, to which she had added shrimp (shell on) monkfish, and scallops, plus lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, ginger, garlic, and a bunch of other things, but she still wasn’t happy. John and I stood there…
There’s a rhythm in Moroccan Gnawa music called Sha’abi. It’s in 6/8, with the main pulse usually played on a bendir (frame drum) with syncopations from both karakab (castanets) fluidly creating a tension between the triplet and the 16th note- and clapping, by at least two people, forming triplets around a beat of four played against the six. Combined with ostinato bass from a sintir, and singing, it’s some of the most trance-inducing music there…
As always- slave to peasant efficiency that I am- with the carcass of a roasted bird in the fridge, I wanted to make a brothocentric meal based on the remains of our Christmas duck. Heather made turkey pho after Thanksgiving, and then Hank, inspired by her post, made wild duck pho, so it was only a matter of time before I caught the faux-Vietnamese virus (get it?) and did the same. The interweb: it’s like…
Taking a break from the rich decadence of the weekend, and of recent meals, I dug deep (literally) into the garden to make something much more veg-o-centric. With two of the smoked chicken carcasses I made a simple broth, then picked all the meat off of them and strained the liquid back into the pot. Milo ate all the “broth carrots” and drank two bowls of broth as an appetizer. He then helped me add…
Christine finally caught The Cold, so Milo and I let her sleep and went apple picking. It was another perfect, crystalline Fall day where the impending doom of Winter sharpens our appreciation of the bounty that still surrounds us- and makes us load a metric ton of fruit into the back of the car. And then we get home and realize that we have to do something, sharpish, with said fruit or it will rot,…
Christine went out to get a chicken, and I mustered enough strength to convert it into soup. This is a two-stage process, because I always like to make a good broth and then strain and tinker with it more depending on what it’s going to end up as. In this case, the chicken simmered with onion, carrot, celery, and parsley for a couple of hours. I reserved the “broth carrots” as Milo likes to call…
John came over on his one free night before the touring begins again; it’s always a treat to have some real time with him since he’s so busy and we usually get together in bigger groups for dinner parties. I didn’t have a lot of time to put together anything fancy, but this time of year the ingredients are so great that they really just need to be arranged on a plate. We began with…
It was such a pleasure to be home for a few days in a row; I got to settle in to the rhythms of the garden and kitchen, where the plants tell me what to eat and I can generate leftovers that inform and give depth to subsequent meals. It also meant that I could finally make another big crock of kimchi, since our Asian cabbages are getting huge. This batch was cabbage, carrots, chioggia…